Coalition
Coalition was a game that we made in class. The prompt was to take an important topic and adapt it to a game, respectfully. We were separated into roles to help manage the workload thus I worked on the Art and Animations.
Coalition and Mental Illness
The topic we chose to abstract was mental illness. We chose this topic because it is a very important topic as well as one that many of the members had experience with.
Endless runners as metaphor
Coalition is a Pseudo endless runner game. I say pseudo because there is an end, even though it may seem like there isn't one. We used this as our main metaphor for depression and the way depression sometimes feels endless, like there is no end goal.
Lives
The first run the player does they have one life, every run they do after that they will still have only one life. This is unless they talk to the other inmates, by talking to inmates they will give you tasks. When completed you will gain an extra life, representative of how friends and family will be there to support you when and if you open up to them about these topics.
Originally we wanted to have an animation that played when the player fails, after they have extra lives, where in which one of the other inmates runs out and helps you stand back up. We couldn't implement this idea because of time constraints but it would have helped convey the metaphor of friends/ support groups as extra lives.
My role
I helped come up with the original idea and metaphoric elements, but after that I backed away to focus mainly on the art of the game. I spent most of the time isolated from everyone in the group except the Lead Designer. I made the Characters, all the Animations (except one), the Menu, and the Tilesets.